Tag Archives: Mind

Sometimes the waters are unpredictable
We sail our ships into waves upon seas,
We once thought, we were the masters of.

The desolate tides, whose previous reckonings, came only to us through our worst imagined fears, nightmares, narrow escapes. Then, swept under the waves, thrusting towards treacherous whirlpools… We sank, we sank, we submerged.

We survived, below the surface, the only way we knew how. Not by reason, nor desire, but sheer necessity. Necessity and fear.

Courage saves us. Courage gives us the strength to conquer the tides-the waves of fear and despair- and reminds us of an innate gift, perhaps forgotten. The truth lies behind this mental fog, the fog which can turn anxiety, depression, compulsion, addiction, delusion, disorder, and painful self-doubt, into a living entity.

Remember this truth, that we have the power, and possess the will, to swim for the shores, and walk forwards from there.

So, I have realised today, that it’s about time I started digging again. Digging properly, digging for me, and for the sake of future flowers/food.

I also need to begin writing again. Writing properly. Writing for me, and for any others who are interested, or happen to relate to any of the issues I find myself blogging about, over the months.

Months, in the past tense, being felt by their very own- memory hoarding piece of Neurological equipment, if you like- as though having passed, in the way of being ‘lost at sea’, and totally at the mercy of the waves.

See when I try to remember, in any kind of meaningful, contingent or chronological manner, the streetlight like glow, of the traumatic events which turned last year into a living nightmare for me, it isn’t exactly a straightforward process.

Perhaps with more time (admittedly, time truly can prove to be a fairly decent Nurse), those memories will begin to feel less raw. Then, perhaps, they could manage to form some kind of structure. Such as a pattern of rocks, washed up on a beach.

Until then, it would appear, my life and the words which seem to need writing, will have to crack on. In a positive, and productive way. So, let’s begin with the latest Dig for Victory style project!

Over March, and now that the so called ‘beast from the east’ and other snow related weather events, are seemingly hushed for now, I intend to try my luck at creating as much ‘garden’ and growing space, as possible, using only a very limited space, which is technically just a balcony.

I will have to think of inventive ways, to build what should look, feel, and hopefully, function as, a small garden, upon something which feels more like a windowsill, than an allotment, let’s face it.

Watch this space, I therefore add!

For there will be pictures of an on-going process, which hopefully can succeed, in turning a canvas of predominantly, grey emptiness, into a vibrant and green honey bee’s playground (sorry neighbours… Bees were here first, and the honey they make is well worth having to see more of them ‘buzzing around’).

I sometimes wish there was a means of silencing that ‘magical’ human condition which most of us living are subjected to, sometimes with pleasant effects, but so often with bewilderingly painful and complicated ‘symptoms’. Love- what a brutal yet necessary force in our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, love can be beautiful. Love is beautiful. I’m certainly not unique in finding myself having to write about it, and forgive me for submitting to what feels a bit like a cliche. At moments, it can’t be helped though.

For me at the moment (hopefully not forever), love burns badly, in a way which I cannot adequately describe in words. It is burning at my core, in a way which is infringing on my ability to even function normally. Thus, leading to the emergence of an immense desire to ‘switch it off’, not necessarily permanently, but at least for long enough for me to be able to move on.

Loving someone so intensely never goes away, and perhaps i’m simply a slow learner in this subject area. I feel so new to the world of ‘getting over heartbreak’ and love ‘lost’. I don’t have practice… can anyone ever have the required level of ‘practice’ or ‘preparation’ to equip them well in dealing with chronically ‘unmet’ love pangs?

It really is downright difficult to imagine ever being able to find yourself, and your sense of wholeness once again, after you spent so long believing so strongly that you were only ‘complete’, when loved in return by a partner you adored. Adore, still, despite all the pain.

That thing people say, about ‘time being a great healer’… well, so far, it doesn’t feel like it’s nursing the wounds particularly breathtakingly, for me so far. It just seems to be making the hurt fester, and begin to blister. Perhaps this is an initial ‘necessary evil’, before scar tissue can begin to form, before gradually becoming smoother, eventually fading. This is desperate hope talking- I so sincerely long for the day that the scar tissue paves over the gaping hole.

I long to rebel against my ‘addiction’ to the person who can no longer return my love. This has surely got to mean some form of ‘progress’, at least that’s what i’m going to have to keep telling myself, for a very long time.

Because, actually, when you really think about it (and yes, I am completely thrilled, to be aware of how Paradoxical an investment upon the mind it is, to deliver the content of this ONLINE blog, to the mind itself, so as to ask ‘you’ all to ‘read’ it….)

Like this:

It’s been a while since I have been able to write on my blog. I’m going to have to give an honest account of this. My ‘spark’ has been snuffed out, over this last year. Particularly over the past three months.

I feel alone. It’s quite sad, and scary to admit this. I feel as though I have isolated myself, far too much.

I love my friends and my family. Of course, i’d like to imagine they love me right back! I just feel sorry that if my own sadness, and mental health ailment- for wont of a better word- has affected and hurt others. Because it must be really, really damn hard, to try and get one’s head around the fact, that I have found myself on occasions, feeling so low, helpless and burdensome to all those around me, that I felt I needed to end my own life, just to put a stop to all the misery, the upset, and the ‘chaos’ I felt I was inflicting on other people.

Just by being me.
Myself.

Ellie.

I feel like a wreck of my former self. I used to like living.

How bad to myself can I even get?

I seem to be intent on punishing myself for the hurt people have caused me, and for the hurt …

See now i’m thinking.

I am beginning to recognize that by hurting myself,

by putting myself in situations where I am vulnerable,

I only fulfill a kind of predetermined death certificate, for which, I sometimes forget my own reason to live.

This will sound ‘crazy’ to readers, i’m imagining. Of course it is completely ridiculous, in terms of logic and common sense, ‘survival of the fittest’ (and all that jazz), but for me, I can confidently suspect that I am not alone in this.

I cannot be alone in all of this turmoil.

In SUM:I WILL SURVIVE.

I WILL

I WILL

I WILL.

Just like the seed, which perseveres beneath that soil, to eventually sprout and bloom into growth, of a new life, and a new Sunflower (in this particular case of the above seedling photo, anyway!).

Never feel afraid to think.

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So I ended up getting ‘sent on sick’ leave at work, due to a climaxing of several momentary meltdowns, into a longer, more insidious one. One which took me to the edge of the cliff, and had me dangling off there with just my bare hands to muzzle deep into the chalky periphery, and claw into the Earth for dear life.

All metaphorically speaking. It’s a way of conveying speech which I think is one of the only ways you can explain, and illustrate, mental health, and how it happens. It is just so much easier to paint a picture via metaphor, when trying to find the shapes which define your mental world, and narrate it’s story.

Trying to be fair to the recipient of your story, which includes yourself and those you voice it to, or those you don’t, it enables some kind of structure for understanding.

It is hard to talk about mental health.

The judgement which you (human), cast down on your own thoughts and feelings, suffers from it’s own distortions. How can you ‘diagnose yourself’ if you don’t know all your own mental parts, which of them you like, and those you don’t (and why?).

This is incredibly difficult to do objectively, when the ingredients of the ‘self’ come so many different sources. It comes not only from our historic, biological DNA and organs; that physical and’see-able’, quantifiable, human blueprint. And it comes from what our senses made of the environment, from birth to now (and counting).

There can be no such thing as a self which can replicated, because the variables, which shape it are too rich in their diversity, and all the odds are against the idea of there ever existing another self, which is identical in it’s on-going crafting, of your own.

So, returning to applying judgement- It’s fair to say that all of us can only use the tools for understanding which we have. Which is the condition against which we struggle, trying find the words to talk about mental health. We find that the words we have to work with, to describe and to think in the language of, are too ambiguous, too contested and too ‘sticky’ to talk with easily, about mental health.

When it comes to how people, including myself, can express and communicate matters of the mind, it’s almost like we’d need a whole new language to do so in a way which does it justice.

I myself can most certainly not be arsed, to embark upon threading some new complications and intricases, into our already infamously complex English Language.

What is Human, I begin to ask…

If to be human is to feel loved, then I feel non-human,

If to be human is to procreate, then I feel inhuman.

Even if the human is the gardener, in the kindest, clearest, blue-ish world,

Then I feel inhuman.

If to be human is to loathe, then I feel most certainly incapable of humanity, which is slightly strange and sad. If it is to exist within a group, and submit to a social stacking order, I even then feel not a human, but a near observer. Of a hive that is not quite my own, but is still the most accessible to my body-bound mind.

Attention diverts to the outside of a mind…

There is something wrong about the house. I shan’t even call it ‘my house’, as it feels completely not my own. Nor even Rowett’s, or the real landlord’s- perhaps more like the old man’s, who lives next door, and has done for many, many years.

Even then though, I feel he would take ownership of this house from a distance, as if knowing it’s rightful owner needed their claim to the stain of the bricks to be respected and left alone.

It breathes dust, ash, dirt and smog. All contents turn soon to a kind of trash, and clamber over one another in order to reach the little light. I want to leave this house. It is uncomfortably temporary, and uncomfortably permanent.